The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  At the moment, he is continuing with his work, but with the passing of each hour, each month in prison, he feels more acutely the lack of scientific information. That really upsets him. He is afraid he will lose touch with current scientific ideas. He needs to exchange ideas with scientists all over the world.

  He has asked me to express his enormous gratitude to all those who support him, who send him letters and books in the colony.

  The evening before the visit, I received a parcel of food for him, from Amnesty International. The joy of knowing that people are thinking of him brought tears to his eyes. He says that he never imagined that one day he would have to be looked after by others.

  On the train returning to Gomel from Minsk I was reading the newspaper (Svobodnyié Novosti, No 9, 7–14 March 2002) and found a statement from the Minister of the Interior, Vladimir Naumov, under the title: “There is no food to give to the prisoners”. In the article, the country was informed that the Minister of the Interior would be presenting a bill to Parliament for a new amnesty. The last amnesty took place in 2000. But there is almost no possibility of an amnesty for the crime for which Yury has been convicted. The only possibility would be a reduction of his sentence by a year. In any case, up to now, that is how it has been, and we can’t really expect any miracles, can we?

  9th-12th MAY 2002

  NEWS FROM PRISON, TELEPHONE CALL FROM GALINA BANDAZHEVSKAYA

  Today I have received bad news from the prisoner in Minsk. Professor Bandazhevsky is not coping well.

  During his first stay in prison, he was examined by the prison doctor and by the surgeon at the prison hospital, who made a complex diagnosis involving five illnesses, three of them chronic, two that are worsening and a depressive state of mind due to his situation. At the moment we do not know how serious these illnesses are, but his physical and mental energy is giving way. Prison and the passing of time are doing their work.

  Bandazhevsky’s lawyer has got hold of the UN Commission on Human Rights. The case was handed over to the UN representative in Minsk, on 22nd April 2002, to be translated into English and sent to Geneva, where he is at the moment. In the conclusions of the complaint it says:

  There is every reason to believe that the court case that led to Bandazhevsky being sentenced to a long period in prison was organised by Lukashenko’s government in order to oust Bandazhevsky from his position as rector of the medical institute and as a renowned scientist, within his own country and abroad, for his research in the field of radiological medicine. It is obvious that his discoveries, his conclusions and his recommendations conflict with the interests of various officials in Belarus who view the ecological and health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster from a different angle and would like to pursue Belarusian government policy in this domain.

  The shared aim of the nuclear lobby and its henchmen in Belarus to prevent this great mind from ever working again risks becoming a reality. Their desire to destroy Bandazhevsky the scientist was clear from the zeal and the brutality of his arrest, in the accusations made against him, and from his sentence, which was delivered without the right of appeal. If he is detained much longer, there is the fear that we may not see the same man come out of prison.

  In the short anguished letters that he writes to his wife, Bandazhevsky says very little now about the scientific work with which he had hoped to continue, even though he was in prison. This would have helped him to resist better. But that is exactly what they do not want.

  I work as best I can when my brain lets me, recalling the knowledge that I had before… I try to keep going. It is very, very difficult for me to be here. I am losing contact with reality.

  The famous library that the authorities vaunted to make people believe that the prisoner was enjoying certain privileges, is the end of a dark corridor, with no windows, a chair and a table against a blank wall, with his eyesight deteriorating… This little façade was organised in response to demands from all over the world, without substantially changing anything.

  When the UN Commission on Human Rights gets hold of this story, there will need to be a surge of protest from international public opinion, from the academic world, and from those worthy of the name within the scientific community, so that democratic governments who are committed to Bandazhevsky’s cause will demand and obtain the immediate and unconditional release of this outstanding scientist. He is the only scientist to have studied and revealed, during nine years of research, a proportional linear correlation between the quantity of radioactive caesium in the organism and the seriousness of pathologies in vital organs and systems among the abandoned populations of the contaminated territories of Chernobyl.

  2. THE TRAP IS SET

  12th JUNE 2002

  NARRATIVE OF EVENTS, AS THE BANDAZHEVSKYS LIVED IT AND RECOUNTED OVER THE TELEPHONE TO ME BY GALINA.

  A first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel in the prison in Minsk

  On 28th May, Bandazhevsky’s former secretary, who lives quite close to them in Gomel, receives a mysterious phone call, telling her that a highly placed person has visited Bandazhevsky in prison and has asked her to go to Galina Sergeievna’s house, fetch two important documents and bring them, the next day, Tuesday, to the governor at the prison in Minsk: the documents in question were the famous report entitled Monitoring the effectiveness of scientific research undertaken at the Scientific Institute of Clinical Research into Radiological Medicine and Endocrinology, on the basis of research in 1998 and the Project for restructuring the public health system in Belarus.

  These two documents, denouncing the shortcomings of government health policy regarding the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, had been written and sent by Bandazhevsky to Lukashenko, to the Ministry of Health and to the Security Council of Belarus, just before his arrest in July 1999. On 29th May in the morning, Yury’s secretary brought the documents to the prison governor in Minsk. The chief prison officer told her that the prisoner was writing a memoir.

  On Tuesday 4th June, Galina gets a phone call at work from Parliament, telling her to ready herself for a meeting in Minsk the next day, at a time which would be communicated to her. At 21.00 hrs she is asked to present herself the next day, early in the morning, at the prison governor’s office, where a member of the government will be expecting her. She travels overnight, takes a shower at her brother’s house in Minsk, and presents herself at the prison.

  Galina knows this high ranking politician, who had visited the institute in Gomel several times. He got on well with Bandazhevsky, and often stayed late in the office with him chatting, particularly on the occasion when his daughter had come to register at the institute. It was this man that Galina had approached when Yury was arrested in July 1999, and it was while she was with him that she had begun to feel alone and let down: on that occasion, he had been quite guarded and evasive. I will refer to this person as the Friend, so as not to create more problems.

  On Wednesday 5th June, the Friend’s tone and the whole atmosphere had changed. He was no longer afraid to see her: “It was me that asked you to bring the reports…I have visited the prison. I talked for an hour and a half with Yury Ivanovich and I have understood a lot of things…I want to write a report to the President. I saw Yury again yesterday to get the documents and I brought him two bags of food”. The Friend showed her a folder with the two reports dating from three years ago and another manuscript several pages long that Yury had just written, explaining the motives for the persecution that he had suffered.

  “Tell me, how are you for money?” he asked Galina.

  “People help me. Yury has not had any income for three years, but I work and I get help from some kind people. Thank God”.

  “But you have two children. How are your daughters? I want to help you”.

  The Friend asks Galina to tell her what Yury needs in prison, because he is going to see him again in the morning and would like to tak
e him some more food. But Galina refuses. He gives her a piece of paper to make a list.

  “No, I don’t want to write anything”.

  “But why?”

  “I don’t want to ask you for anything. I just want to know I can take fruit and vegetables to him when I visit in July, because there is nothing fresh to eat in the prison. Especially in summer”.

  Galina says that the man seemed a bit disconcerted that she was not tearful. She remained stony-faced in front of him.

  “You can trust me, he assured her. I have talked to Sheiman, the prosecutor. He says that Yury Ivanovich is guilty. I’ve also talked to Soukalo, president of the Supreme Court… he says the only outcome is a pardon. In my opinion, Yury Ivanovich has been the victim of a plot at a lower level. The order did not come from above. It’s a local matter. It isn’t the President… I advise you not to politicise the issue. Ask for a pardon”.

  “But a pardon has already been refused”.

  “What do you mean?” (Galina shows him the brief three lines written to Yury’s mother from the director of the administration for pardons) Ah, that’s just a standard bureaucratic response”.

  “It’s possible, but that’s the response”.

  The Friend then turned to the assistant accompanying him, with the words: “We need to contact Soukalo and get his notes from the trial.

  Galina had the impression that he was bluffing when he said this, because it seems that his assistant was about to make a gaffe. She had said “I know that he is in his office, we can call him now”. “No, no” the Friend stopped her immediately. “That’s not how we should do it” Then addressing Galina: “Listen, you shouldn’t politicise this problem. I think we can sort it out ourselves, in Belarus. The delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) are coming on 10th June and have asked for a meeting with you and Yury Ivanovich. Of course, we’ll have to organise that…”

  Galina Bandazhevskaya did not believe one word of the politician’s good intentions any more than the people who sent him to seduce her. She is worried about Yury. She does not know how he will react to this manoeuvre. When she asks the Friend a question about freeing the prisoner, he replies:

  “Of course, that will take time. How long has he been in prison?”

  “A year and a half”.

  “OK, two years is a lot better than eight, at any rate”.

  Galina is convinced he is lying and that, if Yury believes in these illusions and abandons international support, he will not get out for another six years. And then he will no longer be the same man.

  Comment—Professor Nesterenko, who knows this little fraternity, thinks that this is a very clever move on the part of the authorities. It is the only thing that might persuade Bandazhevsky to compromise and it could be fatal for him. He is at rock bottom and very isolated and those in power are dangling before him the hope that his ideas on public health will be taken into consideration at the highest governmental level, as part of Lukashenko’s initiative to overhaul and revise policy at the Ministry of Health. That he could be brought on board on condition that he gives up his “politicising”, in other words his support from the West. It is a possible scenario.

  11th June 2002. An unexpected turn of events.

  This information and the crucial documents were handed over to Wolfgang Behrendt, head of the delegation from the political Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (35 countries), on an official visit to Minsk between 10th and 12th June.

  On the morning of 11th June, Galina Bandazhevskaya had a long interview with the PACE delegation at the Planeta Hotel in Minsk. The situation was quite different from what one might have feared. Behrendt starts by telling her that when they first arrived they were not certain that they would be able to see Professor Bandazhevsky, even though they had asked in advance. But the prison visit did take place. They met him in a bedroom with three beds, with curtains at the windows, a table and a chair. Permission was given for him to have the use of a computer, and this would be at his disposal in two or three weeks. The night before, Bandazhevsky had been allowed to telephone his family. He had spoken for a few minutes to his youngest daughter, who was at home.

  All the same, Behrendt warned Mrs Bandazhevskaya: “I wasn’t born yesterday. This could all be a smokescreen. Be prepared for all eventualities. We asked about the possibility of releasing him. They told us: “two years”, which we were not happy with. We insisted on his immediate release. That’s our role”. Galina had the impression she was talking to determined people who took the matter seriously, and had a clear mandate. She is impressed with the level of their preparation and the fact that they knew the Bandazhevsky case down to the last detail, and understood every nuance. Galina has a slightly more optimistic view of things, given the general political climate in Belarus at the moment, regarding its relations with Europe. The forthcoming visit from PACE is being talked about in the media—newspapers, radio and television—in optimistic and glowing terms. The Belarusian parliament has been invited, for the first time, to a meeting in Strasbourg and this has conferred on it a legitimacy that it has not previously enjoyed. Europe only recognised the Parliament of the third legislature, which was dissolved by Lukashenko when he first took power and set up a new parliament that would be at his beck and call. It is hard to imagine, in these circumstances, why anyone would be bluffing in the Bandazhevsky case, given that his release from prison (retrial) is one of the conditions set by the European Commission for Belarus’ entry to the European Union (see the letters from Romano Prodi, José Maria Aznar, Hubert Védrine, Christopher Patten, Louis Michel, Peter Hain, EuroScience, French Academy of Sciences…) Moreover, the Belarusian media gave ample coverage to the meeting yesterday between Putin and Lukashenko, in which they talked of uniting the two countries and of the entry of Belarus into Europe and NATO.

  What we are probably seeing are the political negotiations that we have been expecting since Bandazhevsky received his sentence. It cannot be excluded that Lukashenko is trying to raise the stakes. In any case, at the moment, it is Parliament—for the purposes of legitimacy—that is playing this role. Behrendt is certainly right to be cautious. The appalling violence and humiliation that have been inflicted on this man, who deserves a Nobel peace prize rather than exile in the gulag, requires total redress. It is in his own country that Bandazhevsky needs to be reinstated, honoured, returned to his Chair as professor, to his research materials, to serve the population who are threatened with veritable genocide194, caused and covered up by the nuclear lobby.

  194 The term “genocide” has been crassly trivialised by a sensationalist press in an era when the world seems to be unhinged. But I am using it here deliberately. The production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, combined with secrecy and deceit, poses a limitless threat to the whole of humanity, particularly to the human genome as it is transmitted from one generation to another.

  This morning 12th June, Galina received a letter from her husband showing her that what Bandazhevsky suffers from most is being unable to work. Scientific research is his destiny and how he makes sense of the world:

  Today I am in a new situation. The new prison block is at No 1, instead of No 21 (postal box 35–1 at the same address) Conditions are very good. You probably already know this. In these conditions I can even work. My position has not changed: I remain faithful to my science as before, and now I am able to continue with it. Don’t worry about me, I’m going to make it. I need to hold on. I understand all that. Everything is much better for me now and I can finally start doing some work. My view of life has not changed. An enormous thank you to all those who are helping me.

  He tells her that he is starting work again on his book Congenital pathology in humans, in preparation for publication, a project for which he had asked for financial help from the European Parliament a few months ago.

  Returning
to Gomel on the train, Galina felt, for the first time in three years, a little of the weight lift from her shoulders.

  3. THE FALL

  In the middle of summer, the news we received came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Yury and his family appeared to be in serious crisis, almost breaking up. It seemed inexplicable and we would only understand the reasons a little later in the autumn.

  4th OCTOBER 2002

  I am writing this News from prison after spending twenty five days in Belarus (from 5th to 30th September) filming in some impoverished and very contaminated villages, to the East of the river Soje, cut off from the world. We have therefore been able to talk in more detail to Galina Bandazhevskaya, Professor Nesterenko, and to Bandazhevsky’s lawyers: Garri Pogonyailo, who filed the complaint to the UN Commission on Human Rights, and Andrei Baranov, who defended Bandazhevsky during the trial and visits him in prison.

  Yury Bandazhevsky has finally emerged from a period of psychological torment and mental confusion which has damaged his health, caused pain and incomprehension even within his own family, and made us afraid during the long summer months (July, August and the beginning of September) that we had lost him. Now we are aware of the facts and of his changed behaviour, things that were unclear at the start, we have had to conduct a patient analysis to understand what was going on, working in silence, questioning him in such a way as to discover how he has been manipulated and to disable the trap laid by the “KGB psychologists”.